Thursday, May 10, 2018

Still having fun with Arts and Crafts

I'm still here.
Still finding time to do arts and crafts.
I've filled spare hours with painting, artwork, sewing and bookbinding.
But I just haven't stopped to write about it.
So, to start with...
 
I find myself sitting down and playing with watercolor paint a lot. Unlike acrylic painting with the constant fear of permanently ruining something with the paint, I can do watercolors virtually anywhere. All my acrylic painting projects are done in my craft room, usually with old cloths on. But I do most of my watercolors sitting at the kitchen table.

In January I was thinking about Valentines and set out to make some watercolor heart art.

.













In February I was busy making a watercolor mixing chart with the different watercolor paints I have been collecting over the past year. I just buy colors I like without any goal or plan in mind. This is the first time I've made one of these charts. It's a little messy.  I'd like to do three different charts; yellows and blues, yellows and pinks, and pinks and blues.



By March I was thinking about Shamrocks but didn't spend much time on that and moved on to just playing with watercolor paint in the form of colorful abstracts.  I've been doing a bunch of these, experimenting with different color combinations.


I often go back over the watercolor with some pen or marker embellishments. 
It's all just doodling to me.



In April I stopped long enough to make something for the monthly ArtSnacks challenge.





But I can't seem to make a really symmetric butterfly freehand.  If I'm trying to be a perfectionist I draw an outline of one side of the butterfly, trace it on to tracing paper, flip that over and transfer the mirror image outline to the other side. I didn't do that this time so I can't look at this without seeing all the asymmetric differences. 

So I scanned in the drawing, split the image down the middle and with some help from Photoshop created two different perfectly symmetric Butterflies from the original drawing. 



Thanks for reading.
Aileen